[11] Bangalter was intrigued by West making the sample suitable for his own personality, noticing how the rapper distorts its meaning like Daft Punk's musical attempts to express their ideas universally.

[13] A-Trak later spoke about the sample at the Meadows Music & Arts Festival 2017 in New York City (NYC), crediting West's "curiosity period" when genres were largely separated and focusing on his strength at "identifying these [great] things".

[14] The DJ also recapped his initial reluctance as he offered that "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" remained "an international hit" despite West not having heard of Daft Punk, feeling the usage could come across as cheap.

[48] Fraser McAlpine of BBC Music graded the song four out of five stars and believed West largely delivered a message to his critics as an artist using "the royal 'we'", elaborating that he is backed by both God and the Daft Punk robots so should be left completely alone and advised to not "pick on him again".

[34] AllMusic's Andy Kellman declared that the bright synths may be "one of the most glaring deal-breakers in hip-hop history";[35] Nathan Brackett of Rolling Stone similarly felt West "single-handedly" returns to hip hop's disco days before the 1980s group Run-DMC.

[28] In Stylus Magazine, Jayson Greene lauded West for pushing hip hop's sonic boundaries with the sample and the "forlorn guitars chiming in unison" at the end, yet he found certain lyrics to show impatience.

[50] Ann Powers from the Los Angeles Times highlighted West's performance by describing him as "push[ing] himself like a runner on a treadmill" who borders on losing his breath and makes the lyrics sound more interesting, despite thinking some of them delve into "embarrassing self-worship".

[51] Louis Pattison of NME praised the song as "a silicone-hearted vocoder serenade, beefed up with hoover-like synthesisers", although he felt it resembles an act attempting karaoke without the words rather than pushing new boundaries and saw the sample as unoriginal.

[37] For Cokemachineglow, Chet Betz said the song works off the production that could have had a lot more impact due to "the glissando chop 'n key melds dazzling but suffering from a distinct lack of knock" and not even Timbaland can redeem it, while he felt West's lyrics were aimed at oppressing the rest of humanity as he "builds his castle".

[24] The music video begins with the flaming trail of a speeding comet, which transitions to a laboratory where West is strapped by wires to a 3D CGI model of the medical machine that Tetsuo is examined in for Akira.

[18][24][81] West lies down while only wearing his boxers and the laboratory is operated by the Daft Punk actors,[9] who appear with helmets in a control room as they push buttons and perform magnetic resonance imaging on the rapper.

[8][18][24] He is then shown rapping the song by a stone wall in NYC as he wears his jacket and shutter shades,[17][18][82] while Cassie appears with a shiny kimono outfit and eye makeup resembling the 1982 film Liquid Sky when she repeatedly dances in a club.

These scenes are interspersed with Japanese writing and shots of Tokyo, including the city's streets, streaked lights, and natives, as well as a motorcycle race with bright taillight trails after the actors press buttons again.

[24] Reviewing the rough draft of the music video for MTV, Shaheem Reid noted that it emphasizes "performance and looking fly", observing "a huge special-effects segment" from the control room and West being worked on by a machine large enough for a truck to fit.

[18] In The Village Voice, Tom Breihan highlighted that the clip is seemingly a "hyper-stylized pastiche" of Japanese sci-fi closely resembling Williams' video for fellow rapper Missy Elliott's "Sock It 2 Me" (1996), although noted it moves towards techniques used by directors to convey immediacy.

[8] He specified these techniques as choppy editing, distorted scenes, and Japanese lettering, while praising Cassie's appearance and concluding that rather than an actual story, the video is "a sort of overwhelming pileup of deft futurism".

[87] After not winning awards at two ceremonies in a row, West demanded MTV to "give a black man a chance" from his hard effort at reaching number one with "Stronger" and vowed to never return to their shows.

[150] "Stronger" was certified double platinum by IFPI Danmark for 180,000 shipments in Denmark on February 15, 2022, a year before it was awarded a quintuple gold certification from the Bundesverband Musikindustrie for shelving 750,000 units in Germany.

West's attorney Carrie Hall asserted the theft allegations would set a standard much too low for copyright infringement over common usage of words and that both songs derive their respective chorus lyrics from Nietzsche's dictum, "What does not kill him, makes him stronger.

[159][160] Diane Wood, the presiding judge, offered the full context that Nietzsche's dictum had been employed in popular works for decades, including Kelly Clarkson's "Stronger (What Doesn't Kill You)", a hit single at the time.

[170] Daft Punk were accompanied by touchscreens and a pyramid inspired by Tron (1982), which was illuminated red to reveal them in an attire of this color and West rocked his shutter shades as he was backed by ultraviolet flames.

[179] On August 6, 2009, West closed Casio G-Shock's the World event at Cipriani's on Wall Street with the song, afront a shifting digital display screen that counted down the time he was onstage.

[183] West opened his set for the 2011 Victoria's Secret Fashion Show at Lexington Avenue Armory in NYC with the song, wearing a Versace for H&M jacket, black leather pants, and Nike Air Yeezy 2s.

[185] West included a shortened version of "Stronger" in a medley of over 10 songs for 12-12-12: The Concert for Sandy Relief at Madison Square Garden on December 12, 2012, while rocking a Pyrex hoodie and leather kilt.

[195] He specified that his maximum effort was being delivered and his self-belief allows others to appreciate themselves, calling out the media trying to make him look crazy despite him performing for 90,000 people and comparing himself to renowned musicians Jimi Hendrix, John Lennon, and Jim Morrison.

[15][206][207][208] Thirty Seconds to Mars said that covering the song for the radio station "helped change our lives" by gathering a wider audience to their pleasure and it was also included on the bonus disc of the band's 2009 album This Is War, alongside the West collaboration "Hurricane 2.0".

[211] In a March 2013 episode of the HBO show Girls, actress Allison Williams performs the song as a slow, stripped down love ballad as Marnie at the birthday party of the character's ex-boyfriend Charlie.

The mayor grooved to the song when waiting on a platform of the Toronto subway and found a story about West's then-wife Kim Kardashian when he read Rolling Stone on the train; the video was taken down by the copyright holder, despite Tory's office insisting it was made for fun.

[236] Britton elaborated that West diversified his influences for Graduation by taking on electronic and indie music from across the world, noting the former genre on the song particularly changed hip hop's sound and demonstrated his "Midas-like touch" by epitomizing an era with his production, attributing this to the Daft Punk sample.

[15][17][82] The shades were sold on the Glow in the Dark Tour and also worn by the likes of Snoop Dogg, Lil Jon, and Paris Hilton, while imitation copies were on sale for $5 at shopping malls and gas stations.